Elias Rankings Update

After the season the Elias Sports Bureau will take all players over the 2009-10 period, divide them into five groups for each league, and rank them based on various statistics. Then each player will be labeled a Type A, B, or none. Those designations and the possible accompanying arbitration offers determine draft pick compensation (click here for a refresher).

Eddie Bajek has reverse-engineered the Elias rankings, and he's providing that information exclusively at MLB Trade Rumors. Here's a look at how the players rank for the period beginning with the 2009 season running through July 24th, 2010. The Google spreadsheet below has separate tabs for each position group. The players have about three more months to change these rankings. You can also go directly to the Google spreadsheet here and download an Excel version here. Our last set of Elias projections is here, in case you want to see what changed.

This can’t be accurate. And if it is, any ranking system that ranks Jose Reyes a “Class B” Free Agent behind the likes of Scott Rolen, Casey Blake, Orlando Cabrera, Ryan Theriot, Luis Castillo, David Eckstein, Chipper Jones, Casey McGehee and Chase Headley is not only seriously flawed, but high comedy. and that’s only the National Leaguers that are ranked ahead of Reyes.

Marco Scutaro gets an A classification and scores far higher than Reyes. No one can tell me that given the choice of Reyes or Scutaro that the Red Sox wouldn’t have snagged Reyes faster than the time it takes Reyes to steal second base.

When healthy, which he is, Reyes is not only one of the best Infielders in baseball, he’s one of the best players in baseball.

I realize this is only for the purposes of awarding compensation picks, but shouldn’t the rankings have a better relation to reality than having someone like Reyes second to last among Class B Free Agents, just ahead of Cristian Guzman and slightly behind Skip Schumaker.

I realize Reyes missed most of last year. But if he’s healthy heading in a free agent walk year, producing like he produces . . . why should the team that loses a player of that caliber be penalized with a Class B ranking. To me that’s a flaw in the ranking.